(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a billing and printing system having an image forming device, and especially to an improvement in billing management and job management under a job contention condition.
(2) Description of the Related Art
Multifunction Peripherals (hereinafter, simply “MFPs”) are image forming devices having both copy and print functions. In one typical usage pattern, an MFP is shared among general users and subscriber users. General users are those who are required to pay usage fees in cash or by IC card at a billing device, to use the MFP as a copier. On the other hand, subscriber users are those who are entitled, under contract, to use the MFP as a printer to execute their print jobs from a terminal connected to the MFP via a network.
JP Patent Application Publication No. 09-297510 discloses a technique for correctly executing a billing process. According to the taught technique, an identifier is assigned to the general user who made payment at a billing device and it is judged whether the assigned identifier matches an identifier included in job information.
JP Patent Application Publication No. 09-259351 discloses a technique for informing users that the usage fees are correctly charged, by displaying information about each charged job, such as the name of the job and the name of the host.